2013 Championship conferences
 

http://www.usfirst.org/roboticsprogr...blast-03-26-13

2013 FIRST Championship Robotics Conferences Sponsored by Air National Guard: After reviewing survey results from last season’s Championship, we have taken strides to make this year’s FIRST Championship Robotics Conferences better than ever. Thanks to your input, admission to this year’s Robotics Conferences on Wednesday, April 24th, 4:00 PM to 7:00 PM and Thursday, April 25th, 8:00 AM to 8:00 PM will be free of charge!

There will be no registration required from team members, coaches or mentors, so please feel free to attend as many sessions as you want. We will be posting a schedule of workshops and panel discussions soon. We look forward to seeing you in St. Louis at the Robotics Conferences and for a terrific 2013 FIRST Championship!

I hope more info will be going out soon to the teams about the sessions and schedule.

I will be offering a conference session on Thursday on "Volunteers & Voluntolds." The targeted audience is anyone who deals with volunteer recruitment, management & recognition - especially for events. I'll be talking about hints for targeted recruitment, great sources of volunteers, some best practices and will have a ton of great links and sites for more info.

You get your money refunded if you don't learn something.

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This is awesome that its now free! People no longer have good excuses to miss some of these awesome presentations.

Has a list of all the presentations this year been released yet?

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Wow, That is truly awesome news.

I've attended many of the great sessions give at Championships over the years and they are definitely worth the money.

But now free thanks to the Air National Guard!
This is truly great.

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Wonderful news!!! I'm definitely going to drag a lot of my team to these!

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I want to go to the conference "FIRST after high school". Is someone here who has attended that conference before?

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I'm presenting this session on Thursday, if you have any suggestions please message me!
Yes There IS an "I" in TEAM - Tips for Integrating Introverts into Your FRC Team

Every successful team includes extroverts and introverts. It can be tricky to get your introverts comfortable with working within a team environment and teaching your extroverts how to work with them! This session will offer tips and suggestions for getting the most out of your valuable introvert team members, from Icebreakers to Brainstorming through Attending Competitions.

Re: 2013 Championship conferences
 

This is so great!

Two questions...

1) I'm glad to see that nothing is scheduled after Karthik's session. On the other hand, does having the Wednesday sessions end at 7:00 (while his session is scheduled to run at least until 7:30) mean that we'll still get kicked out of the room?

2) Speaking of rooms, 230 wasn't big enough when people were paying to attend. With no charge, will there be enough space? Say, 230-232? 220-229? Or maybe early practice on moving in and out of the dome proper? :D

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Hi, I'm just a presenter and not involved in the organization (but very happy these are free!) But I will pass along your questions to the folks at HQ who are organizing.

I'm also hoping they release a little more info - like the abstract - for these sessions.

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Come out to hear Hall of Fame team representatives at this year's "Chairman's Chat" on Thursday afternoon!

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I know the person who is going to be running it. It will be worth it. I believe the conference is going to be on starting FIRST support organizations in college.

The person running the conference founded GOFIRST at the University of Minnesota http://www.mngofirst.org/. I'll be at this one myself (see if you can find me!) I am working on starting GOFIRST at Dunwoody College of Technology currently, by the time champs come around my student organization should be approved by the college.

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Regarding the EWCP talk:

Twenty Four: Being Better Than Plowie
This presentation will focus on using mathematical analysis of the present and past games to help teams determine the most efficient usage of their resources. Topics covered will include: The importance of reading the rules, understanding scoring, and Monte Carlo simulations.
Our goal is to help FLL, FTC, and FRC teams understand the importance of "doing the math" when determining strategy. We will probably focus on FTC and FRC since it is a technical topic and some of the mathematics and concepts are, likely, a little beyond young students. We will bring in examples from FRC history of teams that have analyzed games and chosen not to pursue certain options.

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I'm trying to get an organization started up here at West Virginia University for alumni of FRC, FTC, and FLL. Looks like my application probably won't be put in until Fall, though. Time just got ahead of me. But my main goal is to eventually come up with some sort of national organization for FIRST alumni groups (similar to greek organizations, but not necessarily greek) to help FIRST in their goal of networking with their alumni.

This will be a great conference and I will definitely be there!

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Attending conferences is something to always look forward too at the Championship (my favorites being Karthik's on strategy, electrical, leadership, and the Chairman's ones)! It's even more fun to host one of your own :)

Myself, and another student hosted one in 2010 on Press Releases and interacting with News Media.

Glad to hear that they're free now.

I remember there being a lot of pressure on teams to make students absolutely try to attend conferences to get their money's worth in registration fees.

Hopefully this alleviates some!

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Sounds nice because I want to continue supporting my team (and many other teams, why not?) during college. Thank you.

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Great! For the presentation we will be talking about how FRC alumni can be involved with FIRST after college. Since there are so many FIRST Collegiate Support Organizations we will be talking about the different types of organizations, how you can start one, and I'll have a few representatives from some of the groups there so if anyone is considering going to one of the colleges that has a support organization they can get in touch with them. We will also talk about exactly what you mentioned before, forming a network of alumni organizations and coordinating the first discussion among the groups for June 2013.

We will also be talking about the expansion of the FIRST VISTA program and how you can volunteer for FIRST after college as an Americorp VISTA.

If you are a part of a FIRST Support Organization and would like to take a minute of the presentation to talk about your group please PM me!

(I apologize for any spelling errors, I am on my way to a conference with limited access to Internet and wrote this on my phone!)

Renee

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We are also again having a panel discussion - Today’s Girls in Tomorrow’s Workplace - where women in various technical careers discuss the opportunities and challenges for women, with plenty of time for questions from the audience. This will be our third year presenting it.

We are still looking for a another panelist - any FIRST alum, mentor, parent who is interested in helping let me know. It is scheduled for Thursday at 2:00.

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Do these sessions ever get recorded and shared ?

I'm guessing many of the teams not at Championship would greatly benefit from the information shared.

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The EWCP one will be recorded for sure. Not sure about the others.

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please be sure to post it on CD when you can. I'm very interested to hear this one, but am the coach of the Driveteam, so i'm not sure i can make it.
Thanks!

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Wouldn't miss it for the world.

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The Big Bacon Theory of Image and Marketing will be returning this year.
We will be covering the importance of creating and maintaining a recognizable team identity and brand.
It will be recorded and posted here after Champs.

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Very much looking forward to the conferences this year.
(And being involved in some!)

I hope to see you all at various presentations! This looks like an amazing lineup this year.

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Volunteers & Voluntolds 5-5:45 Thurs. April 25
Abstract: Do you need to recruit, train or recognize volunteers? This presentation will cover current topics surrounding volunteer-driven events and projects. We will discuss: identifying the WIIFT (What’s In It For Them); hints for targeted recruitment; sources of volunteers you may not have thought of; episodic volunteer opportunities and why this is a hot area; common mistakes made with recruitment efforts; a menu of recognition ideas; engaging millenials; and which social networking sites and national, regional and local groups have great suggestions. There will be a short description of AmeriCorps and specifically whether engaging AmeriCorps-NCCC volunteers (teams of 18-24 year olds) might be a good fit for your program or event.

The targeted audience for this session is anyone who deals with volunteer recruitment, management and recognition, with special focus on robotics events and programs.

Jenny Beatty is a member of the Maryland Council of Directors of Volunteer Services and is on a working board for AmeriCorps-NCCC. She has worked with thousands of volunteers during her career, including many in FRC, FLL and VEX robotics programs in Maryland. She is co-founder of NEMO (Non-Engineering Mentor Organization) www.firstnemo.org Jenny is passionate about volunteerism and national service, and you can often find her helping to run robotics events and managing volunteers – as a volunteer.

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The abstracts have been published - http://www.usfirst.org/roboticsprogr...ics-conference

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For those of you who were asking about if the talks were being recorded...

In addition to recording, the EWCP talk will have it's audio streamed live (barring any restrictions on doing so by the venue) and I'll be publishing the slides shortly. I'm still working out logistics on remote participation (i.e. asking questions) I'll post here when I find something. Other places to check include our facebook page, EWCPcast Twitter Feed and TwentyFour's Twitter Feed.

Call will be live at 1145 EST and available via the web at http://www.talkshoe.com/talkshoe/web...d=98466&cmd=tc

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Maybe I'm blind, but where are these taking place? I've never been to St. Louis for worlds.

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Rooms 230 and 240 upstairs in the convention center. (As seen on the schedule sheet, although it's easy to miss.) You should be able to find the rooms on the maps once you're in the facility.

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Thanks!

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We will also be broadcasting Karthiks talk tonight at 6pm cst.

http://www.talkshoe.com/talkshoe/web...d=98466&cmd=tc

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Awesome! I'll be listening in.

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Thank you so much for this.

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Did anyone record the presentation by Jason Livingston on Print your own robot?

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A small request: Someone in the audience recorded a video of the TwentyFour talk. If you are that person, or know that person, please send me a PM - we would like a copy, and our camera broke.

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My presentation slides with notes are now linked from the NEMO website Resources page, and can be found here: http://www.firstnemo.org/PDF/yes-the...i-in-team.pptx.

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Thanks Kathie. Several of our team students and I attended your presentation and really got a lot out of it. :D